Boeing 787 Dreamliner - Mark Wagner [69]
For the all-important 787 flight tests, GE planned to have the first shipset of compliance engines “on dock” at Peebles in September 2007 to coincide with the anticipated award of U.S. FAA Part 33 engine certification. Flight tests on the 787 were due to begin in about October 2007, with European EASA engine certification due in the first quarter of 2008 and U.S. FAR Part 25 aircraft certification for the GE-powered 787 due at about the mid–second quarter of 2008.
General Electric’s GEnx engine 965-005 became the first of the competing powerplants for the Boeing 787 to take to the air, on February 22, 2007, when it flew under the left wing of the company’s Boeing 747 flying test bed at Victorville, California. By a strange twist of fate, the engine flew within minutes of the death of former GE Aircraft Engines President Brian Rowe, the pioneer of the high-bypass turbofan and a key figure behind the go-ahead of the GE90 on which the GEnx was based. Rowe, who was seventy-five, died that day at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center in Philadelphia following surgery.
Rowe would have been proud of the engine’s initial performance. During the three-hour flight, the GEnx-1B64 version for the initial 787-8 model “demonstrated aircraft systems and instrumentation functionality, climbed to more than forty-three thousand feet, and established engine performance baseline for flight testing,” said GE. The initial test phase would focus on “steady-state and transient performance of the engine, verify air re-starting capability, determine the combustor operability margins, validate throttle response, and assess the nacelle and undercowl cooling characteristics.” A second flight test phase, at about midyear, would focus on the engine control system. Most tests would be based out of Victorville, with hot-weather work at Yuma, Arizona, and high-altitude takeoff work in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
The flying test bed was extensively modified to manage the electrical load from the engine’s two starter generators and to provide the power necessary for electrical ground and air starts. The GEnx would produce more than 1 megawatt compared to about 60 kilowatts for current engines of equivalent power. The modifications were completed in January 2007, and the GEnx-1B engine was installed in the inboard pylon on the left wing of the aircraft in just one day.
By May 2007, Rolls was yet to fly its engine but was able to report it had nine engines in testing, “some of which are already into their second or even third rebuild,” said Horwood. Other key milestones passed or in the final stages were the engine type test and the 1,000-cycle initial maintenance interval (IMI) and bird ingestion tests, while total test hours and cycles now exceeded 1,000 and 2,000, respectively.
“We completed the fan blade-off test in the middle of April and we’re very pleased with the results of that,” said Horwood. This was the most severe of all the certification tests and involved explosively releasing a fan blade while the engine operated at full thrust. Further tests included water ingestion, operability, bird ingestion, altitude testing, and the completion of the 150-hour type test. Following completion of the IMI work, the sixth test engine was sent to Waco, Texas, to help with commissioning of the test bed itself.
Although the first flight on the 747 was originally set for about February, Horwood said Rolls-Royce elected to complete the majority of engine altitude testing at AEDC, “where we have a very good controlled environment. We wanted to complete our work at the altitude test facility, and we have chosen to make sure we’re flying on the FTB with a build standard as close